What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

A Veritable Well of Untapped Potential

You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I was a straight-A student.

And now -- well, so what? Spellcheck has relieved us of the need to spell it correctly in the first place. Calculators are on everything from phones to, well, calculators. Science comes in handy during Trivial Pursuit and while watching Cash Cab, philosophy makes me a thoughtful and open-minded drunk, and my music knowledge – well, again with the Trivial Pursuit.

I made a mistake in not going directly from high school to college.

And I made a mistake in learning to type.

This is probably going to blow your mind, so you may want to brace yourself against a large bit of furniture, but I type like the ever-lovin' wind.

Cool, huh?

No. Not really. Because once it’s been discovered that you’re good at something, suddenly, no matter where you are, if there's a need for a typist, no one else in the room can do it.

“Could you just do the typing? I type with two fingers. It’ll go so much faster if you do it.”

A number of years ago we had a college student, an intern, at work. Nice guy, probably 22 or so. He was young and unblemished and wore earnest business casual sweaters with khaki pants. We called him “Intern Boy” in our discussions of him over the lunch hour.

I wouldn’t say he and I were friends. But we were colleagues; and at work, that’s enough, don’t you think?

He stops by my desk one day.

“Hey,” he says.

I look up from the report I am furiously typing. Can I get a 25-page report typed and proofread in an hour? My boss seems to think so.

He places a pile of papers on my desk. “I’m going to need these faxed by the end of the day.”

I frown slightly. “You are, huh?”

His face takes on a cautious appearance. “Um.” Am I one of those saucy, quirky secretaries he's seen on prime time TV? He isn’t sure.

I cock my head slightly and continue to look at him.

“I don’t know how to fax,” he says.

“It’s easy,” I say. “You see that machine over there? You put the papers, face-down, in the feed. Then you punch the fax number in on the keypad and press the big green button.”

He doesn't move.

Perhaps he hasn’t noticed that the fax machine tutorial is over.

"So voila,” I conclude. “Fish and chips.”

He smiles flirtatiously. “Oh, come on. I’ll just mess it up if I do it,” he says coyly. “I’m sure you do it better than I ever could.”

I think about the As, the gold stars. I think about the Pythagorean Theorem, my interest in Russian literature, about how great I had been on those Word Find puzzles in elementary school.

Whatever he had been studying the last four years, there had not been time spent on office equipment – or office etiquette.

I sigh. “I support four of the people on this floor,” I say. “I’m sorry, but you’re not one of them. You’re going to have to learn to operate the fax machine for yourself.”

And I go back to typing.

Poor Intern Boy. He walks over to the fax machine, and I lose track of what he is doing. I hope he had taken that as simply and as directly as I had phrased it.

Hari OMAgain you echo my past... I never quite got the knack of saying "no" effectively enough during corporate service however. Instead I nearly skinned the fingers and certainly burned all the candles. I lacked a sassy role model like our Pearl... YAM xx

Nine times out of ten, I'm more likely to sigh and just tell them to let me do it. Why? Because I have one boss in the office who continually asks me to show him how to scan so he won't bother me with his personal stuff. I have shown him how to do this about 15 times now. Just give me the damn piece of paper already.

I too, type fairly well now, and around 50-60 wpm way back....took a typing class for a forgotten reason in soph year of hs, and quickly got the knack. It served me well in grad and medical school, the latter I had a early apple computer....my papers were easy to do compared to my peers.

He brought you a frosted cookie! That's so sweet. I bet wherever he goes to work now, he will always think of you when he has to fax anything.I wasn't an A student, but I can still remember Pythagoras' theorem.